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46
SATYAŠĀSANA-PARIKSÃ
must be admitted in order to make their relation understandable. Otherwise atoms would never combine and our perception of unity by the side of difference would remain unaccounted for.
Another important point of difference between the Vaiseșika and the faina is the question of personal God. In the Nyāya-Vai eşika school, particularly in its later development, the existence of Personal God is advocated. He is not the material cause of the world. He is only the efficient cause. The body, the sense-organs, the world, etc. are known to have a definite origin in time. Who has created them? It can be inferred that they were brought into being by an intelligent person with the help of the material atoms just as the articles of daily use are manufactured by persons vested with knowledge and skill. Such intelligent person is God.
But the Jaina advances the counter-arguinent : “God is not the creator of body, etc., because he is devoid of bodily organisin. Whoever is devoid of bodily organism is not the creator, for instance, the emancipated self. God is devoid of bodily organism. And therefore He is not the creator." The Vaise. șika denies boclily organisın to God. Granted that God has bodily organisin. But eternal God must have an eternal body. Now as the bodily organism is a composite entity, it must ex hypothesi be a product created by an intelligent being, and this would prove it to be non-eterna). If in order to avoid the contingency, the body is admitted to be created without any intelligent creator, this would contradict the doctrine that all products inust have an intelligent creator.1 Now if the Vaiseșika admits God as devoid of bodily organism, the activity of creation would be impossible of explanation. And if he accepted the possibility of creative activity of a person devoid of bodily organism, it would be simpler hypothesis to admit the karman, though unconscious, as capable of doing the function. Possession of both 'intelligence and bodily organism' are necessary for the creation of an object, as illustrated by the instance of the potter. Now God, though possessed of intelligence, is devoid of bodily organism and so does not satisfy the full condition of creation. Karman, though unconscious, makes up a composite material body according to the faina, and so it is on a par with God in this respect. Karman therefore is as much the satisfactory condition of creation as God of the Vaiseșika philosopher.
The Vaiseșika might contend that the essential condition of creation is the presence of intelligence, desire and effort. The karman of the Jaina does not satisfy these Conditions and therefore creation cannot be set down to it. But the Jaina submits
1 nityasyāpi taccharirasya buddhimat-kāraṇāpūrvakattve tenaiva kāryatvādi
hetūnām vyabhicārät.-SŚP, p. 39.
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